Posted July 25, 2013
tinyE: Your guns can pivot which means you can be facing/moving one way and shooting another. Obviously what that means is that you need separate inputs (there is a dirty joke somewhere in there) for shooting and flying. The way I do it is I use my left hand and keyboard for steering (left right up down) the ship and my mouse for aiming my guns.
DreadMoth: I think you might be thinking of another game, or a mod - FreeSpace and FreeSpace 2 have fixed-mount, forward-facing guns and your ship always faces the direction you're moving (unless you're using reverse thrust or have been pushed by a collision or blast). There is a free-look button (default is Numpad 0) which allows you to look in a different direction, but your guns still point forward (in free-look mode there's a red spot indicating where your ship is facing). Mouse controls the direction your ship faces (assuming you have mouse control enabled in the options - sometimes it defaults to "off" for some reason) and thus where you're aiming (crosshair in the middle of the HUD).